By Joyce Babayeju
A prominent Nigerian virologist and Chairman, Expert review Committee on COVID-19 Professor Oyewole Tomori, has said that Covid 19 origin tracing should not be politicized.
In a chat with Daybreak newspaper on the likely origin of the virus and the controversies it has generated, the renowned virologist and pioneer Vice Chancellor of Redeemer University noted that it would be difficult to say in specific terms the origin of the virus
” it’s difficult to say, what we know scientifically is that either ways there are possibilities and evidence of human relationship with animals causing infection. It is also possible that an error can be made and it can result from that, however nobody has any concrete evidence that this is what happened that’s the way to look at it.
Scientifically no body or country has presented any evidence to tell us the origin of the virus.
In the real sence we do know that the Americans have been working with China in Wuhan lab, they have been doing collaborative work in the Wuhan lab with funding by the Americans for a long time then suddenly you are backing out and heaping the blame on China and calling for more investigation and demonizing WHO as not credible”
I believe the prevailing lab lick theory should be discarded for now until there is solid and empirical evidence, but if it must be pursued then it should be global and led by WHO without pressures from the US. There are over 200 labs spread across the world conducting researches with corona viruses.
However, the lab leak theory has been dismissed by most mainstresm scientists as a fringe conspiracy theory being promoted my the American government.
In any case if the US is insisting that it is investigating the Wuhan lab in China as the source of the lick or as a larger biological weapons programme by the Chinese, the Americans should come clean and also grant access into one of its own high tech biological research lab located at Fort Detrick, Maryland which is known as the center of the US biological weapons programme and has been known for conducting researches with corona viruses.
Prof Tomori noted that issues of science should not be overtly politicized but based on concrete scientific evidence.
“That is how America went to Iraq with allegations of weapons of mass destruction and destroyed the country without finding anything
We can see how they hurriedly left Afghanistan, what were they doing there for twenty years? The US has a history of looking for scapegoats for its own failures.
Prof Tomori also spoke on the hoarding of COVID-19 vaccines by some Western nations describing it as “shortsightedness” noting that no country can be free of the virus until all countries are free
“it is shortsightedness on their side to do what they are doing and is capable of prolonging the pandemic” He said.
Using polio as an example he said that although most Western countries have been free of the disease for many years they are still vaccinating against it because of it existence in third world countries
“take polio as a good example, most parts of the Western world have been free of polio for the last ten to twenty years but they are still vaccinating against polio because third world countries are not free and can still spread it to them. They have not learnt from that message, that until all of us are free they are not free they think they are responsible to only their own people”.
